There is little argument on the value of knowing the rationale behind decisions made when developing software and other large systems. The difficulty is in eliciting that information from the developers. The philosophy behind SEURAT is twofold: to provide uses of the rationale that go beyond presentation (which is a valuable use in and of itself) and to provide a rationale support tool that is integrated into the environment used by the software developers. The Eclipse framework has become very popular and has allowed us to develop SEURAT as a plugin that integrates with tools already used by software developers.

The most comprehensive description of SEURAT can be found in my dissertation "Software Engineering Using RATionale". The slides from the defense presentation are also available. If you want additional insight into how SEURAT works without installing it, I have created a PDF file giving an example of SEURAT in action This is a bit out of date but should give the general idea. There are also screen shots available in Word if you are interested in describing SEURAT in a presentation and need better resolution.

SEURAT was initially developed as my dissertation work in the Computer Science Department of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. My advisor was David C. Brown and my dissertation committee members were George Heineman and Carolina Ruiz. and external member Feniosky Pena-Mora, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.